MUSIC : He Sees Period Performances at Crossroads : Pianist Steven Lubin made his reputation playing early instruments, but, he says, he never renounced the modern piano.

Pianist Steven Lubin has made his reputation in concerts and recordings playing early instruments such as the 18th-Century fortepiano. But he’s not one to insist that that’s the only way to go. In fact, he thinks the period-performance movement has reached a turning point now that the newness of it all has worn off.

“The early-instrument movement is at a kind of crossroads, probably undergoing a change of how it thinks about itself,” Lubin, 48, said in a recent phone interview from his home in the Bronx, New York. “It needed to change. For 10 years in this country, the novelty about these kinds of sounds carried all before it. That has died away. I’m glad it has.”

For all the work Lubin has landed because of his association with the fortepiano--”I have more work than I ever had in my life”--he insists, “I never really renounced the modern piano in any way at all.”

As proof, Lubin will play a modern piano Monday in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor with the Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Still, Lubin says: “I do think the early-instrument movement is permanent part of the mainstream now. One thing it does better than modern instruments is that it has the capacity to evoke an era with great specificity. That you can’t do on a modern piano. . . . .

“But I’m not one that makes a great deal about the ‘authentic’ sound, as if sound is all that makes a great interpretation. People who do early music in the most impressive and important way share with modern interpretations how a work is constructed and how the structure is expressive.”

It was the search for expression that originally attracted him to the instruments of Mozart’s day.

“I was trained and raised as a modern pianist, but I always wondered what Mozart sounded like on his own instrument,” he said. “There was no opportunity until someone copied one because the instruments that survive in museums just kind of fall apart and self-destruct if you try to play them.”

So in the mid-’60s, when a revival of interest in period instruments was beginning, Lubin got a kit to build an 18th-Century fortepiano--that was all that was available at the time--and assembled it with the help of a friend.

“It was a success. People seemed convinced by it. It was primitive compared to what we can do now, but at that time, it was good enough to get quite a lot of interest in the idea. It’s been picking up steam since then.”

According to Lubin, modern pianos are better suited to a larger hall such as the Center.

“Balances don’t work so well and timbres don’t exactly match,” he cautioned, “but in a large hall, this way of doing things is very sensible and works fine.

“I do play Mozart on the modern piano somewhat differently than I would on the fortepiano,” he added. “It’s a little straighter in the sense that I don’t try to interpret things in a kind of perfumed or very small dimensional, small-scaled way.

“With the earlier instrument, you find a way of being expressive within a narrower range of dynamics and color. . . .

“I feel that one should not imitate an 18th-Century piano on a modern instrument but carry over the same scaling. . . . One tends to fill out the capabilities of any instrument. On modern pianos, one should do the same thing, comparatively.”

Filling out a work such as Mozart’s dramatic D-minor Concerto (“One of Beethoven’s great works,” he joked) will present a particular challenge, he says.

“I think that the D-minor Concerto was a bolt from the blue,” he said. “Nothing that Mozart wrote before that prepares one for it. It took a lot of courage for him to put this on in a public forum in Vienna at that time. There was no reason why he should have thought that his audience was ready for it. It was really an audacious stroke.”

* Steven Lubin will be piano soloist in Mozart’s Concerto No. 20 in D minor with the Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg led by Hans Graf on Monday at 8 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Graf also will conduct Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 and Gerhard Wimberger’s “Reflections on Mozart Themes.” The program is sponsored by the Orange County Philharmonic Society. Tickets: $12 to $31. Information: (714) 646-6277.

FREE DUCATS: The Philharmonic Society has announced that pianist Ivo Pogorelich has canceled all appearances that require international travel. Pianist Santiago Rodriguez will replace Pogorelich on the March 9 recital at the Center. Rodriguez will play works by Mozart, Chopin, Falla, Soler and Ginastera.

The Society is offering Pogorelich recital ticket-holders two additional free tickets to one of seven Society-sponsored events at the Center or at the Irvine Barclay Theatre. Information: (714) 553-2422.

SCHOLARSHIPS: The Orange County Musicians’ Assn., Local 7 of the American Federation of Musicians, will offer cash awards totaling $2,000 to young musicians through the B. Douglas Sawtelle Musician Scholarship Competition. A separate $500 award will be offered to a young jazz musician through the Mick Price Scholarship.

Applicants must be Orange County residents and be enrolled as music majors or minors at a two- or a four-year college. Applications are due by April 12. Information: (714) 546-8166.